Rank and file

2014-07-01 12:00:00

Which teams have started highest in DCTF's high school rankings over the last half-decade?

By John Loop TexasFootball.com

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High school football fans obsess over rankings. They know the ins and outs of the abundant numeric systems their teams are subjected to, and they know what kind of power those numbers carry in the high school football community.

Though there is tremendous parity in high school football, the Dave Campbell’s Texas Football high school rankings paint an accurate and consistent picture of the state’s top teams.

Through a combination of categories such as geographic location, playoff success, and number of state championship rings, I looked at teams ranked in the top echelon of their respective UIL classifications over the last five years and computed their average ranking. Without further ado, here they are:

Team

Avg. Rank

Mart

1.2

Allen

2.8

Aledo

3

Katy

3.2

Newton

3.2

Falls City

3.6

Cameron Yoe

3.6

Daingerfield

4.2

Euless Trinity

4.4

Lake Travis

5.6

Cedar Park

5.8

Goldwaithe

6

DeSoto

6.2

Chilton

6.6

Argyle

6.8

Arp

7

Celina

7.8

Tyler John Tyler

8.2

Southlake

9

Cedar Hill

10.2

Highland Park

10.2

Navasota

10.4

Dallas Skyline

10.8

Galena Park North Shore

11

Gilmer

12

Arlington Martin

14.2

West Orange-Stark

14.6

Wimberley

16.6

Converse Judson

17.6

Austin Westlake

18.2

In dissecting these teams and their rankings, some interesting information:

Everybody should have expected some combination of Mart (1.2) and Allen (2.8) to line up one and two. The Panthers and the Eagles have combined to win six district titles and three state championships over the past half-decade. It is easy to see why these two top the bunch.

The majority of teams seem to be clustered in the North and Central regions of Texas. Of the 30 teams on the chart above, 18 claim territory in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and the Austin area.

You would be hard-pressed to find a squad on this list that has finished a season with less than ten wins in any given year. In 150 combined seasons, 28.6 percent (43) of them failed to accrue double-digit victories.

One team that surprised me on this list was Southlake Carroll. Their average rank (9) was far lower than I thought it would be. It doesn’t seem like a school with insurmountable football tradition would end up on the very edge of the top ten.

The South region gets the short end of the stick in this discussion. Only five schools have managed to be ranked in each of the past five years. Because of the large amount of land the region covers, it leaves the pool of great schools to rank significantly depleted.

Chilton is another anomaly of this group. Pirate fans had witnessed four consecutive seasons of less than ten wins before the Pirates until the team finally made it over the hill. Their rank would not tell you that, though, sitting at an average of 6.6.

It is a great honor to be numbered, literally, among Texas’ top high school powers. And you can definitely count on most of these teams being ranked highly again at this time next year.

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